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Water shortage hits Pugu students hard
2007-07-22 12:27:27
By Mbena Mwanatongoni
A poor student at the famous Pugu Secondary School on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam parts with what sounds a paltry 200/- a day to purchase water from vendors for drinking, washing and bathing.
The alternative is to make do with milky-coffee water drawn from a well located a kilometre from the school.
This reporter confirmed the pathetic situation in interviews with students and staff.
If I cannot cough up 200/- a day, which adds up to ,400/- a week or a hefty 6,000/- a month, my health is threatened,Ó 18-year old Fourth Former Selemani Amiri said.
He was at the time drawing not-so-clean water from a swamp.The scarcity of water hit the school in earnest from 1985 and the problem worsened progressively.
No water is produced from the pipes installed some 57 years ago, remarked the Second master, Benedict Ogessa.
The gravity of the matter is how many parents can afford to allocate 72,000/- on water alone for each boy attending the boarding school.
The student population stands at about 1,800 and a simple calculation suggests that the students pay 129.6m/- on water in a year.The situation is perilous.
The school administration pays 650,000/- for water alone each month, and according to staff members Stephen Mariki and Atumaini Makoba, the amount is pinching the school budget.
They say that every three days the school buys 15,000 litres of water from dealers who ferry it there in bowsers.
The crux of the matter is that the entire liquid cargo is directly used for cooking the studentsÕ food, and not for washing the utensils, nor drinking.
Either the students have to buy bottled water which is relatively expensive for them, or resort to ordinary water they buy for a 100/- per pail of 20 litres.
If you cannot afford to buy the ordinary water from the vendors, you have to resort to this muddy and coloured water we are drawing from the swamp, said 19-year old Damian Peter, a Form Four student.
Haji Mussa (16), a Form Two student, pleaded that something should be done to save them from diseases due to the use of unsafe and dirty water that students with little purchasing power are compelled to use.
Available statistics indicate that the students alone need an average of 76,000 litres of water a day at the rate of only 40 litres per head in a day for washing purposes, bathing and drinking. The staff community of about 200 is not included.
Initially the school was supplied with water from a pump station at Gongolamboto.
Officials of the supply utility firm DAWASCO, said that the ever growing population around the area was making it difficult to supply water to the school through the existing infrastructure.
He said efforts were made by the Well drilling and Dam construction unit to ease the water problem at the school but the pump installed at the swampy place is incapable pushing the liquid upstream, although when it functions a minimal 200 litres of water are pumped up.
The community of Pugu Secondary School is proposing that it be connected to the Minaki source uphill.
Minaki, where there is another secondary school, is rich in the liquid and it requires simple investment.
The community members also appealed to former students (alumni) to take interest in attending graduation ceremonies so as to note the difference over the years.
This can prompt them to volunteer or sponsor some kind of action to change matters, a concerned teacher who was a student there some eleven years ago, Makoba, observed.
The late Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, was the only indigenous teacher among four in the early 1950s. The other three were white missionaries of the Benedictine Order.
Some of the students who fared well at the school and later rose to positions of prominence in the development of the nation include former President Benjamin Mkapa and Pius Msekwa, the former speaker of the National Assembly.
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